Royal Naval Dockyard. Bermuda

This is the view from the Dockyard Commissioners House over the Naval Dockyard at the Eastern end of Bermuda.

The Dockyard was built after the American Revolution, to watch over the newly independent and hostile USA. The Royal Navy found itself without an anchorage or a major ship repair facility south of Canada.

Beginning in 1809 the Dockyard was built by slave and convict labour in the harshest of conditions. Extensive defences were built immediately around the Dockyard but also in the Bermuda archipelago to defend the Dockyard from landward assault.

Visible in this shot are store houses in the "Keep" - the inner defended area, the slipways and in the distance the "Casemates" barracks built for the Marines.

In the 1860s the largest floating dock in the World was towed by the newly invented Steam Warships from Britain to Bermuda, where it could lift any warship then afloat. This was replaced by the No 1 Admiralty Floating Dock in the 1900s. Its rusting remains still lie opposite the Dockyard on Spanish Point.